MLB 14 The Show Review

MLB 14: The Show Is The Best Sports Game On The PS4

After some hits (FIFA 14) and misses (Madden NFL 25), gamers finally have a (nearly) perfect next-generation sports game to play on PS4.

The first thing you’ll notice after loading the disc is that MLB 14 is graphically night and day from the last-generation version. SCEA utilized the power of PS4 properly here. Players look realistic, and stadium recreations are spot-on. The polygon counts from each scene jump from 150K to over a million. There are 1,000 different crowd models, up from 42, and the animations are intensely real — down to the blades of grass on the field.

Gameplay is vastly improved as well, with over 50 innovations including Quick Counts, which will surely be a polarizing addition. Much like EA Sports’ accelerated play clock in Madden, SCEA has added Quick Counts as a mode that cuts the time taken to play a game down to around 30 minutes by creating an algorithmically generated existing pitch count for every at-bat. If only Bud Selig would follow suit and find a way to shorten games in real life.

Other really cool advancements are Dynamic Difficulty, which helps players (who, like me, generally suck at baseball games) to figure out the best difficulty level to play at, and Player Lock, a feature that lets you play a Road to the Show-like feature where you can play an entire game (which is an addictive mode). This feature helps the player learn various positions on the field and speeds up the game as well.

Another standout of MLB 14 is its pristine audio. From the crack of the bat to the ball hitting a glove and even the sound of the players’ cleats as they round the bases — it’s all there. Crowd noise is also recorded in high definition, although the chants could use a little work. The authenticity is kept intact all the way down to the post-game public announcement system. For instance, after playing a home game with the Oakland Athletics, I heard the PA announcer instruct fans on which BART and AC transit public transportation options to take. If that isn’t realism, I don’t know what is.

As an added bonus for those that couldn’t wait for the current generation version to be released, any progress you made on the PlayStation 3 or PS Vita versions of the game can be carried over to the PS4 iteration. And with the Year-to-Year Saves feature, progress from MLB 14 can be carried over to next year’s game as well.

MLB The Show is the only baseball simulation game out there, so it could suck and probably still do numbers. Fortunately, the SCEA title has been one of if not thebest sports games for the past few years, and MLB 14 definitely carries on the tradition.%displayPrice% at %seller%